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Mubarak Rashid Al-Mansouri, formerly the chief executive of the Emirates Investment Authority (EIA), has been appointed governor of the Central Bank of the UAE. He replaces Sultan Nasser Al-Suweidi, who had been at the helm of the institution since 1991, and was widely seen as a capable leader. Mansouri was appointed chief executive of the EIA – which is the federal government’s only sovereign wealth fund and is chaired by Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan – in 2008, the year after the fund’s inception.

Qatar Holding (QH) sold around a third of its shareholding in the London Stock Exchange Group (LSE) on 10 July, though it still remains one of the exchange’s largest shareholders. “This transaction forms part of the routine portfolio management activities undertaken by QH from time to time.

Manchester City’s second Barclays Premier League title in three years has made Abu Dhabi United Group owner Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, scion of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family, revered in the east side of the UK’s second city, if not beyond. But based in the stadium named for Etihad Airways and generously sponsored by several other UAE companies, Man City has also been under the spotlight for allegedly abusing Uefa’s new Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules – which is an issue, too, for Qatar’s European footballing interest, French club Paris Saint-Germain (PSG).

Iran is exploring the option of setting up an inward investment office in Dubai to help funnel money into the Islamic Republic, if a deal can be done to resolve the stand-off over the country’s nuclear programme. The initiative involves businessmen close to President Hassan Rouhani, although it will not necessarily be an official government office. Dubai is already home to an outpost of the state-run Iranian Trade Promotion Organisation, but this new office would rely on more agile private sector actors rather than the lumbering state bureaucracy.

The US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca), which is intended to prevent tax evasion by Americans living abroad, will be applied to all financial institutions operating in the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) region from July 2014, obliging banks to provide details and personal data on the accounts of all US citizens, Green Card holders and entities controlled by US citizens as signatory authorities. Some smaller institutions have already seen it as a burden too many, and have started to refuse business from potential Fatca targets.

The former governor of the Central Bank of Iraq Sinan Al-Shabibi has called on the Iraqi government to give “more power to the private sector to act as a unifying factor for the country and to create a strong and vibrant economy”. Al-Shabibi was speaking at a conference on governance at the University of Cambridge on 18-19 October, to mark ten years since the US-led invasion of Iraq. Also speaking at the conference were Sadiq Al-Rikabi, an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, Dawa Party MP Haider Al-Abadi and Kurdistan Regional Government foreign minister Falah Mustafa Bakir.

Deputy prime minister and finance minister Sheikh Salem Abdulaziz Al-Sabah criticised Kuwait’s bloated bureaucracy and inefficient labour market on 7 October, repeating views he expressed before resigning as governor of the central bank.
Interestingly, his comments were carried by state news agency Kuna, although the headline, ‘Kuwaiti economy “strong and stable”’, highlighted a different aspect of what was his first extensive public policy statement since taking charge at the ministry in August (GSN 953/8). 
Sheikh Salem did, indeed, say Kuwait’s economic situation was predominantly strong and stable, pointing to a KD12.7bn ($44.8bn) surplus for the 2012-13 financial year ending in March, representing 24.7% of nominal GDP for 2012.

The National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah (Rakbank) announced the appointment of Peter England as its new chief executive on 1 September. England will replace Graham Honeybill, who is retiring after 17 years with the bank. He was due to be succeeded by Ian Larkin, but the latter left in June, just a few weeks after arriving, apparently because of a clash of working styles.

In the coming months, Lebanon’s Blom Bank will open its first branches in Iraq. According to the bank’s chairman, Saad Azhari, it has approval for branches in Baghdad and Erbil and expects to start business in both cities before the end of the year. Iraq may be a new market for the Lebanese bank, but it will find plenty of familiar faces when it gets there. At least six other Lebanese banks are already active in the country, vying for business alongside dozens of other home-grown and foreign-owned institutions, and more are coming all the time. According to recent media reports, the UK’s Standard Chartered has also gained approval to open branches in Baghdad, Basra and Erbil.

Newly appointed finance minister Ali Sherif Al-Emadi has been named chairman of Qatar National Bank (QNB)’s board of directors. Before being appointed to government, Emadi was chief executive of QNB for eight years, having joined the bank in 1998.

The Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA)’s main investment arm, the Kuwait Investment Office, now manages more than $120bn globally, compared with just $27bn ten years ago. KIA managing director Bader Mohammed Al-Saad was recently quoted by Reuters as saying the sovereign wealth fund had more than doubled its investment in the UK. “The KIA has invested more than $24bn in the UK across all asset classes, sectors and industries. Ten years ago, it was $9bn,” he told an investor lunch in London.

The Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA)’s main investment arm, the Kuwait Investment Office, now manages more than $120bn globally, compared with just $27bn ten years ago. KIA managing director Bader Mohammed Al-Saad was recently quoted by Reuters as saying the sovereign wealth fund had more than doubled its investment in the UK. “The KIA has invested more than $24bn in the UK across all asset classes, sectors and industries. Ten years ago, it was $9bn,” he told an investor lunch in London.

The man supposed to take over as chief executive at the National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah (Rakbank) has reportedly quit, not long after the bank was the victim of a massive global bank card fraud. News agency Reuters quoted two sources within the bank as saying Ian Larkin – who was to take over from outgoing chief executive Graham Honeybill in July – left just six weeks after arriving at the bank.

Two Gulf banks – Bank of Muscat in Oman and Rakbank in the UAE – were the victims of a brazen global $45m cyber-heist, when hackers accessed the systems of their card-processing companies and used the data to withdraw millions of dollars from cash machines around the world. The highly co-ordinated attack – which involved harvesting pins, erasing withdrawal limits and encoding the magnetic strips on dummy cards – saw so-called casher cells swoop on ATMs in more than 20 countries in just a few hours. A total of nine people – seven in the US and two in Germany – have so far been arrested, but the hackers themselves remain at large.


Moody’s Investors Service’s annual Banking System Outlook for Qatar remains stable, unchanged since 2010. “The outlook reflects Qatar’s benign economic environment and the rating agency’s expectation that Qatari banks will maintain strong financial metrics, including low levels of non-performing loans, robust earnings and sound capitalisation,” Moody’s said in a statement on 9 April.